Category Archives: Links

So…I might have missed a Friday link post or two. To be honest, I was so bogged down in last-minute cramming for the CCIE lab exam I didn’t look up to figure out what day it was. Thankfully, some interesting things have happened in that time, so I’ve got a few interesting things to share:

Until recently, Cisco customers were required to use the Unified Computing System (UCS) platform when running Unified Communications (UC) applications in a virtual environment. On June 7th Cisco introduced a new support model called “Specification-Based Hardware Support“. With this announcement Cisco widens virtualized platform support to include IBM and HP.

For those that constantly complained that virtualizing CUCM/CUC was only possible on Cisco UCS, here you go. There are a few supported platforms from IBM and HP, but take care that your whitebox server probably isn’t going to ever be supported.

Please note that since we wrote this for a class we had some specific items we needed to include, such as specific financial profitability targets for our recommendations, which would otherwise seem pretty odd in a blog post like this.

Good paper outlining the background of RIM and the troubles they’re going through right now. While I don’t know if RIM can right this sinking ship any time soon, it appears that some people believe that RIM still has a chance to stay relevant.

Perhaps Apple will have better luck than others who have tried
convincing ChronoPay to quit the rogue anti-virus business, but I’m
not holding my breath. As I noted in a story earlier this year,
ChronoPay has been an unabashed “leader” in the scareware industry
for quite some time.

I don’t need to tell you that the majority of spyware/malware/crapware out there is motivated today by money. It is a little surprising to find out that one company seems to be masterminding things. And with the surge in Mac sales raising their profile among hackers, expect a flood of junk for the Mac.

Unknown hackers have broken into the security networks of
Lockheed Martin Corp and several other U.S. military contractors,
a source with direct knowledge of the attacks told Reuters.
They breached security systems designed to keep out intruders
by creating duplicates to "SecurID" electronic keys from
EMC Corp's RSA security division, said the person who was not
authorized to publicly discuss the matter.

I am Jack’s complete lack of surprise. As we discussed on Packet Pushers almost 2 months ago, there was more to the RSA breach than was being let on. Looks like the tokens are compromised and making copies is easier than RSA would like. If you’re using SecurID tokens, it’s best to discontinue their use if possible and get in touch with RSA to get them replaced. You might also think about mentioning you don’t want them pulled from stock. You know, just in case…

Many times when working with a client network or working on our own we have the need to test, document and validate certain networks configurations in a test environment. Sadly not many have the money to have one so as to test different scenarios so as to gage the impact that this changes might have on the production network. For a majority of configuration when it comes to system settings and routing a virtualized environment can be of great help, sadly anything ASIC or HW Specific configurations. On this blog post I will cover how to virtualize JunOS operating system to aide with testing and validating.

This does indeed work. Remember though, that you need to be a Juniper customer to download the Junos images.

As web companies strive to tailor their services (including news and search results) to our personal tastes, there’s a dangerous unintended consequence: We get trapped in a “filter bubble”and don’t get exposed to information that could challenge or broaden our worldview.

Something that never occurs to a person because they don’t realize what’s going on. It seems that the Internet is walling off the outside world from us a piece at at time.